Neeley Main

Inspiration can strike an artist from any angle. Sometimes it is visual such as a shape, a color, the light, or maybe a it will be a song that strikes a note, or an article in a magazine or newspaper. On this occasion it was purely intellectual. I was inspired by Michel de Certeau’s poststructuralist essay titled “Walking in the City” from his book “The Practice of Everyday Life.” I was struck by de Certeau’s discussion of how routes are drawn within a city, not the ones by city planners, but by the everyday people walking their own self determined paths. As the walker moves through the city streets, following their own path, that walker defines the city for themselves. My goal was to define San Francisco for myself by ignoring street signs, cross walks, and other pre-determined rules and plans. I walked through the city and snapped pictures of scenes that caught my eye, defining the city for myself and by myself. This portfolio is the result of that walk.

Note: the images were not actually taken with a Polaroid camera but with a DSLR. I processed the images in Photoshop to make them look like Polaroid images, including finding a scanned Polaroid frame in which to put my photos.